Disney’s Fantasia, released on November 13, 1940, features a twenty-minute segment that pairs Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Rite of Spring with an animated sequence that portrays the evolution of life from ocean microbes to the extinction of dinosaurs. The score starts with outer space and goes back in time to 4.5 billion years ago, revealing the Milky Way Galaxy, comets, the sun, and shooting stars. The segment then descends to Earth being born and exploding.
The Rite of Spring is the fourth and longest segment in Fantasia, focusing on the Big Bang, the Dinosaur Age, and extinction. Disney and Leopold Stokowski created the stunning animation and effects for this classic scene, which was considered controversial at the time. Stravinsky’s ballet was used to depict prehistoric dinosaurs in Fantasia, and Disney created the stunning animation and effects for this classic scene.
The Rite of Spring is the only piece of music featured in Fantasia, written by a composer who was still living. The piece was written as a ballet score by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky for the Ballets Russe in Paris in 1912. The Rite of Spring segment remains a favorite dinosaur film in Walt Disney’s Fantasia.
📹 Fantasia (The Rite of Springs)
This is a musical film of fantasia will take you to the beginning of life in prehistoric times.
Why didn’t people like Rite of Spring?
The Rite of Spring, a ballet by Igor Stravinsky, premiered in Paris on May 29, 1913, and was expected to be a major cultural event due to the talent involved. The Ballets Russes, or “Russian Ballet”, was a hot ticket due to the Eastern exoticism of previous productions, such as Firebird and Petrushka, both composed by Stravinsky. The audience was shocked by the ugly costumes, heavy choreography, and harsh music, which was expected to shock the audience.
The choreographer, Vaslav Nijinsky, was known for his shocking and often risqué choreography, such as his 1912 performance of Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune. The audience was shocked and with good reason.
Is The Rite of Spring difficult to play?
“The Rite of Spring” is a masterpiece in twentieth-century orchestration, known for its catchy and memorable nature. However, it is a challenging piece to play, with the first recording to achieve the desired effect coming from Pierre Boulez with the Cleveland Orchestra in 1969. The piece was considered impossible to play precisely as written before. The composer also enjoys matching music to the season and weather, such as jazz, which can transform “depressing” weather into “atmospheric” ones. “Spring” from Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” might match the spring weather in Georgia, but in South Bend, where it’s snowy, hails, and winds, “The Rite of Spring” is more suitable.
What era is Rite of Spring?
Igor Stravinsky’s 1913 work, The Rite of Spring, revolutionized 20th-century music, blending Russian influences with French influences. Stravinsky’s music, driven by pure gut feeling, was designed with no apparent order, redefining the genre. This musical movement, similar to Beethoven’s Eroica, reflects the era’s shift towards a more Westernized aesthetic, where architecture, music, and language were largely influenced by France.
What classical music pieces are in Fantasia?
Walt Disney’s “Fantasia” is a groundbreaking masterpiece of American cinema, combining fantastical sequences with eight pre-existing works of classical music. Composers typically write music tailored to the action, setting, and mood of the story, but Walt Disney’s creators conjured up fantastical sequences to accompany these works. The film was ranked as the 58th greatest film in the US by the American Film Institute in 1998 and received two honorary Oscars after its release.
Audiences can view segments of “Fantasia 2000” and its sequel on the big screen, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performing live under guest conductor Emil de Cou. The event will take place on November 24-26.
Why was Nijinsky’s The Rite of Spring referred to as Nijinsky’s lost ballet?
The Joffrey Ballet’s “Rite” is celebrating its 100th anniversary, a choreographically lost work that had few performances and was controversial. The reconstruction was a collaboration between Joffrey Ballet founder Robert Joffrey and choreographer Millicent Hodson, who spent 16 years assembling Nijinsky’s lost choreography from old notes, drawings, Stravinsky’s rehearsal score, photos, and conversations with Ballets Russes members like Rambert.
Hodson’s investigation led to the marriage of art historian Kenneth Archer, who was researching costumes and sets for the original “Rite”. The reconstruction aims to revive the ballet’s iconic dance form, which was a controversial and controversial piece of dance history.
Is Tchaikovsky in Fantasia?
The Nutcracker Suite, a selection of pieces from Tchaikovsky’s ballet, Fantasia, debuted before the ballet’s premiere in December 1892. The suite, loosely based on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s fairy tale, was the last of Tchaikovsky’s three ballets. Although he did not live to see The Nutcracker’s success, his work on Russian ballet music marked a turning point in music history. Tchaikovsky elevated ballet music from background music to an art form with more variety and richness of rhythms, melody, and orchestration. Disney has also featured Tchaikovsky in various films and shows, including Stravinsky, the last in a series.
Is Dionysus in Fantasia?
Dionysus, also known as Bacchus, is the Olympian God of wine, party, and merriment from Hercules. He plays a minor role in the film, usually appearing in cameos. At the beginning, he is present for a party celebrating Zeus and Hera’s newborn son, Hercules. Eighteen years later, Hades unleashes the Titans on Mount Olympus, imprisoning all the Gods, including Dionysus. Hercules saves them all. At the end of the film, Dionysus celebrates Hercules’ arrival after gaining his Godhood. When Hercules decides to live as a mortal on Earth with Megara, he still celebrates his decision.
Did Stravinsky see Fantasia?
Igor Stravinsky, a Russian composer, was the only composer still alive to see his work on the big screen when Walt Disney set classical compositions to animation for Fantasia. Born in 1882, Stravinsky was fascinated by Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty ballet during its premiere year in St. Petersburg. Despite initially intending to become a lawyer, music lessons led him into a new career. Stravinsky moved to Hollywood in the late 1930s and conducted concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. In 1940, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring was included in Fantasia, a connection that was not lost on Mary Costa, who was also fascinated by the ballet.
What part of The Rite of Spring is in Fantasia?
The Rite of Spring is the fourth and longest segment in Fantasia, focusing on the growth of life on Earth during the Big Bang. Walt Disney and his fellow artists have visualized the ballet as a pageant, telling the story of the first few billion years of the planet’s existence. Science, not art, wrote the scenario of this picture. According to science, the first living things on Earth were single-celled organisms that lived under the water. As time passed, oceans began to swarm with various marine creatures, eventually leading to the first amphibians.
Several hundred million years ago, nature produced the dinosaurs, which came in various shapes and sizes, including the largest being a hundred-ton nightmare. They were vegetarians, amiable, and easy to get along with, but had bullies and gangsters, with the most notorious being Tyrannosaurus Rex. The dinosaurs were lords of creation for about 200 million years.
However, the exact cause of the dinosaurs’ extinction remains unknown. Some scientists believe that great droughts and earthquakes turned the world into a gigantic dustbowl, but the story ends with the beginning of life on Earth, where there was nothing but clouds of steam, boiling seas, and exploding volcanoes.
Imagine yourself in space billions of years ago looking down on the lonely, tormented planet spinning through an empty sea of nothingness. The Milky Way Galaxy can be seen coming out of the darkness, and Earth is shown being born as volcanoes light up the planet as they burst with lava.
Why was Rite of Spring so controversial?
On May 29, 1913, Les Ballets Russes in Paris performed The Rite of Spring, a ballet with music by Igor Stravinsky and choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky. The performance was characterized by a rhythmic score and primitive scenario, setting scenes from pagan Russia. The complex music and violent dance steps, depicting fertility rites, initially sparked unrest, leading to a riot. The Paris police intervened but only restored limited order, causing chaos for the rest of the performance.
Despite this, Sergei Diaghilev, the director of Les Ballets Russes, praised the scandal as “just what I wanted”. The ballet completed its run of six performances without further disruption. The piece is considered a 20th-century masterpiece and is often heard in concert. In 1988, the Joffrey Ballet reconstructed Nijinsky’s original setting, televised nationally on PBS, 75 years after its premiere.
What movies is The Rite of Spring in?
Walt Disney collaborated with Stravinsky to use The Rite Of Spring in his 1940 film ‘Fantasia’, but its influence extends to films like Raiders of The Lost Ark, Star Wars, E. T, Psycho, Jaws, Psycho, and The Shining. The work has been influenced by many other scores, and while many cinemagoers may be unaware of Stravinsky’s work, its influence extends to the audio-visual world. Some of the best excerpts from the Rite of Spring are provided.
📹 Rite of Spring
Provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group Rite of Spring · Leopold Stokowski · The Philadelphia Orchestra Fantasia ℗ 1990 …
18:10 there’s something so eerie and unsettling about this scene, going from perusal these dinosaurs going from living charmed lives in a lush rainforest to them sluggishly walking through a barren and empty desert with some collapsing from exhaustion while others keep struggling forward. The brass section playing a loud and janky tune while both carnivores and herbivores trudge together in silence without attacking one another is just so unnerving and chilling.
Even though the old theories of the Dinosaurs and prehistoric times are now outdated in Fantasia it’s still fun to watch and learn on how far we’ve come on our understanding of pre history. I grew up perusal the original Fantasia and this sequence in the movie is something that I love and will never forget.
Outdated as this section is, the story of life’s origins this protrays is beautifully grim THIS is why despite how boring some segments are to kids today, Fantasia still stands it’s ground over 80 years later It’s a prioneer of visual-musical story telling, letting Walt’s musicians and artists having fun interputating these classical songs and I’m all for it, especially with sections like this and Night on Bald Mountain.
My grandma who died this year at age 83 was born the day this movie came out. The scene you see here was seen by soldiers right before shipping off to the battlefields of Europe during ww2. People that watched this film in theatres had no television at home yet as that only became common after the war. Let that sink in for a moment.
Fun fact: the original plan was to go all the way up to the age of humans, where humans are dancing around after discovering fire. The scene was cut due to Walt Disney not wanting to get ire from creationists. The cut however was disliked by composer Igor Stokowski, and even turned him away from animation for a long while.
0:01 – 3:16 Introduction to the Adoration of the Earth 3:17 – 6:17 Augurs of Spring – The celebration of spring begins in the hills while an old woman enters to foretell the future. 6:18 – 7:39 The Ritual of Abduction – Young girls arrive from the river to begin the Dance of the Abduction. 7:40 – 12:00 Introduction to The Sacrifice 12:01 – 14:46 Mystic Circles of the Young Girls – The young girls engage in mysterious games while walking in circles. 14:47 – 16:02 Glorification of the Chosen One – One of the girls is chosen. 16:03 – 16:54 Evocation of the Ancestors 16:55 – 19:44 Ritual Action of the Ancestors – The Chosen One is entrusted to the old wise men 19:45 – 21:30 Dance of the Earth 21:33 – 22:13 Introduction to the Adoration of the Earth (Reprise/Finale)
Although we now know this is scientifically inaccurate, it is still nice to take a look at this movie as it serves to be a window that shows us how the field of paleontology evolved throughout the years. And it is nice to see what we thought was accurate back in the 1940s. Plus the animation works greatly with the music and dare I say it, even more than it being played over a ballet.
Though some dinosaur representations are now outdated due to more recent findings, The Rites of Spring sequence is still gorgeous to look at it and gives an understandable take on the evolution cycle. I was blown away the first time I saw Fantasia and it deserves its permanent slot in my article collection. In some respects it still has not been surpassed.
Despite this film coming out in the 1940’s the animation holds up really well today despite the inaccuracies think about it this is land before time levels of animation it’s really a shame that animation has gotten pretty terrible nowadays I mean those dinosaurs look like they’re real despite it being 2D animation and it’s in the 1940’s it’s still pretty damn good
This is a masterpiece. You don’t see this kind of depth from Disney or any movie these days … First that fight with the Trex I remember at the shock that and sadness when the stego didnt win. And that scene where the dinosaurs start dropping down in the heat … god that gets to me every time. I imagine that hell must be like that.
Something I absolutely personally love about this segment is the symbolism of water throughout the entire thing. Before the water, there was lava and fire. Chaos. Then water came and helped cool the Earth, which gives way to life. The entire time we see life on screen, it is shown with some kind of water. They’re eating and drinking from water, and existing in places with it. It’s shown they cannot live without it. That life cannot thrive without it. Then, when the extinction comes, there’s no water. Only heat and chaos once again. Once they all die, chaos unfolds from the Earth and then water comes back as a reset. Showing that everything is a cycle, and life will once again evolve and thrive if given the chance. I think it’s a really cool bit of artistry, and this is one of my favorite animations of all time. Not to mention how charming and fascinatingly alien the outdated depictions of life are. It’s so mesmerizing. You really feel like you’re in an alien world for a while.
So nostalgic. When I was in the second grade I always used to come home from school and fall asleep to this on the VCR. My favorite parts are 3:18, 14:47, 15:46, 17:47, 18:48, and 20:17. I have to admit, when I was younger I would always throw a tantrum because the stegosaurus died. Poor stegosaurus. Lol. Thanks to anyone who took the time to read this.
I will be honest to say that this is my absolute favorite segment within Fantasia. When I was younger, I was stuck to the screen with it’s fantastic (albeit inaccurate) representation of prehistoric life. As I got older, it still has not lost its touch with me. I’ve actually listened closer to the music and the music helps with the representation. It’s quite mad, really. I then decided to watch a full rendition of the original score of Rite of Spring and I was surprised at how groundbreaking it was. Compared to other scores which feel very linear and progressed to a point, this score had such dissonance with tone and rhythms would abruptly change, which is very unique. Going back to this segment, a lot of people rank this as their least favorite or they don’t know what to feel about it. Which is a shame because this is a roller coaster of a segment. My theory is that because some of the segments, not all but some, have a very linear feel to their stories, this one doesn’t and as a result they a bit taken aback by the changes and have the feeling of, “There’s dinosaurs and then they’re gone, WTF?” The composer’s intent, as stated by Deems Taylor (the host of Fantasia), was to express life in it’s primitive state. It’s full of craziness and full of abrupt beginnings and ends. So I think they succeeded in that regard, even if they weren’t totally faithful to the score. Also, you feel like an observer of life, as you’re floating through the vacuum of space, the eruption of volcanoes, all the way to the emergence and extinction of the dinosaurs.
Exceptional music and animation. You can feel genuine tension and fear in the tyrannosaur fight, as well as a bizarre but nice, warming feeling of an older earth. That alien-but-familiar feeling is only amplified by the nostalgia I’ve held for this film. It’s like meeting something/someone you’ve met before, but can’t exactly pin it down.
I absolutely adore these older reconstructions of dinosaurs. I know people know a days really hate looking at them and can’t stand the inaccuracies, but I love them. They seem like creatures right out of a fairy tale, and they honestly look much cooler than the more accurate reconstructions of today. I’d like to see something nowadays be done where these older designs make a comeback, to pay tribute to the adventure films of the ’20s and ’30s. Hell, maybe a remake of the 1925 lost world movie would be a great idea. I am personally not a huge fan of this movie, but this segment (And arguably the ending one on bald mountain/Ave Maria) has my attention. I love how there’s no dialogue, no sound effects even, we’re just perusal animals in their habitats. I’m not saying I want a full movie like this or anything, but I just find it fascinating here. My favorite part has to be the Elasmosaurus’s swimming in the shoreline. I know it’s inaccurate now and they have the outdated neck posture, and couldn’t go on land, however it gives off a perfect atmosphere.
3:17 For these volcanoes, they were actually made from drops of black paint that were turned upside-down in a vat of water, which is how they developed smoke patterns. The music in the background in this scene sounds pretty tribal, which is like the sound of Native American drums beating. And the volcanoes are kinda like teepees with smoke coming out and that’s what the song What Made The Red Man Red from Peter Pan reminds me of, because this whole volcanic scene, here in the Rite Of Spring sequence in Fantasia, makes me think of tribal music and tribal dances.
I see people saying the fight scene terrified them the most as kids, but honestly? I always thought that was cool. You know what part really terrified me? The extinction. That absolutely horrified me. Especially how the earthquakes and tsunamis destroy the bones after, leaving no trace of their existence.
As much as I critique the inaccuracies in this scene (which I can forgive since this was made in the forties), I still think this is an excellent piece of animation featuring dinosaurs. I was getting Walking With Dinosaurs and Walking With Beasts flashbacks the last time I watched this. I like to think that this scene may have been an inspiration for kids to study dinosaurs and other aspects of prehistory.
Thought of something kind of dark. Imagine what the last dinosaur was thinking at the last moments. Sees a t-rex coming up behind him and the last dinos, thinking he’s gonna get eaten. However he sees the t-rex drop dead of thirst. Then one by one he sees the last of his kind drop dead. I always thought he or she would be mentally broken at that moment think, “Oh god I’m the Last one left. What the hell do I do?” Kind of Dark to think of.
To this day, I remember how, as a kid, this part of the movie always grabbed – and held tightly onto – my attention whenever it came on: the T. rex showing up to those screeching orchestral stings, how sad the stegosaurus(?) fighting for its life made me, and how disturbing perusal the dinosaurs march toward extinction under a red sun was – not to mention the segment at the end with the brass section blaring over a giant earthquake tearing apart the land.
Ok, first, is NO ONE going to talk about the music when the predator (called Rex for simplicity) is revealed? Second, despite how EPIC the fight between the stegosaurus and Rex is, something huge that bothers me, is that just one bite from Rex on the Stegosaurus’ neck would’ve instantly killed it. And same goes that one hard blow that the Stegosaurus gave to Rex with his tail also would’ve either killed Rex or seriously injured it. Correct me if I’m wrong. Third, I love Rite of Spring.
As a kid I was most locked into the dinosaurs. As an adult I am more intrigued with the volcanoes erupting in unison before exploding in a super eruption, volcanic gasses spewing from a cinder cone and igniting, mountains and rock faces violently rising from crushing tectonic plates, and then it all going quiet and fading into the darkness of a solar eclypse. Bravo!
15:13~ I have loved the Stegosaurus ever since I saw this scene. The Stego put up one hell of a fight. This was also my first time hearing portions of the Rite of Spring back when Fantasia came out, I was a kid then and I immediately fell in love with it. Also I remember crying when the dinosaurs started dying in the desert under the hot sun. 😆🥰🥰
I am no musical expert (if I could find the article where I read this, I’d link) and someone else might have mentioned it but part of the reason you might be so unsettled by this particular sequence is the music itself. It is written to be discordant which not only grates but sets our alarm bells ringing just enough to unsettle. Something like that, anyway.
Loved The Rite of Spring a lot because I’m a dinosaur lover. I read in Disney Wiki that The Rite of Spring was first scripted to show the whole history of Earth which after the dinosaur extinction would show the Ice Age with woolly mammoths, saber-tooth cats and cavemen, but it was cut because the Disney company soon discoverd showing the rise of man wasn’t all that popular back in the 40’s.
DECADES later and this movie, to this day, still has such an amazing impact on me. I’ve never forgotten these three scenes in particular, for all my life, back when I was younger and watched Fantasia at my grandparents house. And I love it just as much now as I did then (though less terrified now, shit scared me to DEATH when I was younger)
Love this movie. As a kid, the T-Rex sequence scared me and my cousin a lot. The tense music with the realistic movements of the dinosaurs was FRIGHTENING. Now, I’m 27 years old and it still freaks me out…and I thought the game Nanosaur was frightening. And the music is TERRIFIC, beating many article game enemy/finale tracks. This makes me wish that Fantasia 3 was made and released >~<
17:45 This movie was made before the theory of the dinosaurs being killed off by the giant asteroid that struck Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. At the time the common theory is that a massive desertification period wiped out much of the vegetation and fresh water in the planet. Which is actually kinda spot on in that water and plants would become scarce after the asteroid impact, the effects of which would be similar to a decades long volcanic winter. It’s amazing to think that anything could survive the planet being hit head on by a rock the size of Manhattan traveling at tens of thousands km/h. But hey, life finds a way
This was always my favorite scene in this film, especially the sequence that shows the evolution from one celled organisms in the ocean to the time the fish came up on land as amphibians. Just beautiful. The science isn’t entirely accurate by what we know today (especially involving the time of the dinosaurs and their extinction, but much of it still holds. As a child, the music frightened me. Now it just haunts me.
This was the best segment of Fantasia. It would have been interesting to make a full length movie version of this world. The reason for the excess level of aquatic lifestyles for dinosaurs in this movies because scientists at the time did not believe a sauropod would be able to support its body mass on land and could only get to that size with water supporting it (kind of like whales today).
this entire segment was why i repeatedly re-watched fantasia as a kid. when it showed the earth-moon from space, i was excited for the lava scene. the bubbling, bursting lava chunks, and the way it slides out the volcano and down the cliff, is so satisfying in a way i cant describe. it made me so eager to see the dinosaurs, which i believe was my first exposure to them (or land before time 1). glad the uploader restored this priceless old memory.
I remember LOVING fantasia as a kid while growing up in the 90s. My parents bought it for me as a toddler and I would spend days perusal and dancing with the movie (driving my entire house mad with “Fantasia, AGAIN?”). This segment, however, always gave me nightmares because of how brutal both the animation and music was. Im older now, went through that online free course from Harvard for the Rite of Spring, watched the reconstructed Ballet and I have to say – this is one of my favorite pieces of music.
I will always love this animation. It is so chilling and hauntingly beautiful to see the explosion of the planet and all the organisms on it, all the creatures fighting to survive and simply living their own lives. Then to see them all slowly die one by one, marching along over a vast wasteland in scorching heat searching for water and food and finding nothing. Crazy and amazing knowing the earth changes and evolves and this is simply how it will always be and once again this will happen and life again will take a new form.
For all the inaccuracies, there’s actually a lot here Disney was spot on about long before the scientific community could agree on where true. Like how the stego’s back plates weren’t actually that good to be armor protection and it was likely the tail that was the defense weapon instead. Family groups and packs were indeed a thing, especially among the herbivores. Dinosaurs actually looked out for one another and different species on neutral ground will not bother one another. And how running away likely wasn’t an option for at least some of them due to their biology, but was easier for others for the same reason.
My absolute favorite as a kid. Also scared me, especially the skull at the very end. But this, along with visits to my local natural history museum and library really cemented my love for paleontology. Im only 26, but i enjoyed this and the latter half of the dinosaur revolution of the 90s-early 2000s
This was one of my favorite segments of Fantasia. I love dinosaurs and these animated dinosaurs are awesome. I believe that the dinosaurs all died off in the great flood of Noah from the Bible. But there are other ideas why the dinosaurs died off and most common one is that a giant space rock hit the earth and turned the world into a endless desert.
This gives us an example how life on Earth began 4.6 Billion years ago. From Volcanoes to How oceans were born and how the sea creatures develop and land creatures of Prehistoric animals such as Dinosaurs. Towards the end of the Cretaceous period, all the dinosaurs and other species, died out. Continents were split and it shows Prehistoric life in Fantasia.
Igor Stravinsky was the only featured composer alive at the time of “Fantasia’s” initial release. When he was contacted to use the “Rite of Spring”, he offered to compose a new piece for the film. However, this was not taken and Stravinsky hated Leopold Stokowski’s re-orchestration and re-organization of the piece that he nearly sued Disney. The pieces where not performed in chronological order and two of them were completely left out.
Scientifically accurate or not, it basically represented birth, life, and death of one random time in Earth’s history, as a sum up, scientific and historic vulgarizing to commoners people, adults and children…and for all of that, especially if you watched it as a kid (like I did too, btw), honestly ? I think it did a fantastic job in that regard and from that perspective…of course it couldn’t explained accurately like a true scientist job would, but that never was the point with this artistic touch to begin with ! For me, as a kid, again, without a single word pronounced, it just gave me the best possible idea to understand, from my low level intelligence, what happened in this Earth time line and how did it look, pretty much…that’s all I’m saying. Neither less nor much. And I believe it deserved widely to be appreciated as such…so this is why I’ll always feel grateful to Disney, for what it gave with this work of art, at this time it did. Which doesn’t prevent me to keep criticising it with other things it did at other times that didn’t work as good as this one for me, obviously !
Am I the only who doesn’t care at all about the dinosaur inaccuracies? I learned a lot about dinosaurs when I was little, and I still am learning a lot about them. But, despite me learning about the “accurate facts”, I don’t care about the inaccuracies here. I actually didn’t even know there were inaccuracies here until I read the comments lol. I probably just forgot some facts. But despite me knowing now, I still find this animation to be amazing and beautiful to watch. I have loved this since I was little, and I don’t care about the inaccuracies. Not a lot of things about dinosaurs have been discovered yet when this was made. I learned to just appreciate it for its time that it was made.
Through Fantasia I was first introduced to the wonderful works of Igor Stravinsky. I will always appreciate Disney for this. Interesting to read about when Stravinsky first mounted this ballet. The story goes, upon hearing the opening notes of the bassoon so out of its usual range, a music critic stood up and yelled, What the hell is THAT!! And stormed out. For my money, the consummate performance of The Rite of Spring is Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO. He conducts it from memory, no less.
The fact that it took 60 years for Fantasia to get a sequel, which wasn’t quite on the same level as the original, and hasn’t been so much as looked at ever since, makes me so sad. Think of all the incredible potential a third installment could unleash, both in terms of musical selection and animation!…
The animation looked amazing but the inaccuracy is the prehistoric animals lived in different time periods like the dimetrodon lived in the Permian period the apatosaurus stegosaurus and Ceratosaurus lived in the jurassic period and Tyrannosaurus triceratops parasaurolophus and hadrosaurus lived in the creatoucus period and the dinosaurs are outdated because it’s a very old movie but still enjoyable you might to get on with inaccuracies and also Tyrannosaurus doesn’t even 3 fingers and long arms t rexes arm in real life had 2 fingers and their tiny but whatever it’s still enjoyable
interesting thing to note is while the dinosaurs didn’t die from a drought, the “winter” that would’ve been caused by the asteroid impact gave a similar effect to the planet-just a freezing cold hellscape instead of a burning hot hellscape you can swap around the sand and heat in the drought part for ash and cold and it would play out mostly the same way
The opening scene of entering the Milky Way galaxy, passing the sun, and arriving at Earth during the Hadean eon (4.54-4 billion years ago) is kinda crazy. Of course given this is 1940, we don’t have Theia smacking into Earth and forming the moon because this was like 40 years before that theory came about at all.
This movie was DECADES ahead of its time. It’s extremely hard for us to believe nowadays, but at release Fantasia was not only a financial and box-office disappointment, but it was also a critical disappointment. It was PANNED by the vast majority of film critics at the time. I know, it’s hard to believe, isn’t it? But yep, it’s true. Fantasia, the film that the vast majority of critics and fans of animation in general now consider to be not just Walt Disney’s masterpiece, but a masterpiece of animation period, bombed HARD. Like I said, Fantasia decades upon decades ahead of its time!
I love this article. I’ve used the dramatic DUH DUH DADA DUH DUHHH that plays around 18:47 to chase after my girls while pretending to be a dinosaur. It’s been our game for so long now that they are always chasing each other around the house while singing that tune. Occasionally I’ll spring it on them by barging into the room with the sound on my phone on full blast and chase them down. They crap themselves everytime 😆 🤣 😂
Watching this is my first time! This is nothing so bad. Very eerie and chilling. I had never thought of this as old at 1940. I should think of this as at 1980 – 1990. After all this have color in and graphic so so. Because TV came to at that time so how can them create this movie. If really this movie created that time, so this is amazing!
Though the dinosaurs are depicted with what are now outdated designs due to the information people had of their skeletons at the time, these dinosaurs in particular feel very real to me because their movements and behaviors are based on real animals. They may look like very unlikely animals, let alone something on our planet, even, but the way they’re animated especially reminds me that they very much were our animals. It’s like you can put the pieces together as to where today’s animals come from.
I remember perusal this so many times at a young age, my dad was born in 1942 and he treated me like an adult with information from a really young age. I learned how the earth was formed roughly. I remember him telling me each time the screen goes dark to show a new scene consider that like 20 million years of time amd evolution passing. I also learned that at anytime we could all just dissappear due to a cosmic coincidence like an asteriod 😂 and he did nothing to reassure me. He was like oh totally we could just stop being a planet at anytime kiddo. Talk about a waterboarding of existential dread 😂
We should be thankful Not just for this sequence in the movie but think about this: Dinosaurs had their chance at the beginning of evolution millions of years ago They lived, frolicked, ate and died out On the one hand it’s sad they all went extinct but again it’s nature’s way We as a species would’ve been out of luck if they had survived to this day, struggling to avoid being eaten or stomped on becoming the secondary life forms on this planet This sequence is brilliant not because of the music and the animation but because it’s our estimate as humans wondering what the prehistoric days would’ve been like A lot of changes good and bad This is still my fav segment in Fantasia next to Sorcerers Apprentice and Night on Bald Mountain
All the creatures in this are Ankylosaurus(?) Triceratops Stegosaurus Dimetrodon Crassygrhinus Eusthenopteron Sea Scorpion Parasaurolophus Gyprosaurus Edmontosaurus Lystrosaurus Nothosaurus Pteranodon Tyrannosaurus Ornithomimus Compsognathus Archeopteryx Apatosaurus(brontosaurus) Hypsolophodon Ammonite Ceratosaurus Diplodocus Plateosaurus Brachiosaurus Dimorphodon Struthiomimus Tylosaurus Elasmosaurus Placochelys
I just realised- the Tyrannosaurus killed the Stegosaurus by clamping it’s jaws aroudnd Stego’s neck, then made a twisting movement, after which it’s prey just…dies. What may have happened is that Tyrannosaurus broke the Stegosaurus’ spinal cord, along with crushing it’s windpipe and larynx. This obviously should have killed the Stegosaurus instantly, so why is it still alive for like 6 seconds? It’s possible that the coordinates for the tail to raise were sent JUST before the spinal cord got snapped and it didn’t die istantly, it raised its head, AS it was dying, so in the highest elevation point it died and dropped it’s head, along with the tails. And the eye closing? It may just be that, since the eye was already half-closed, it may have simply fallen down completely.
I see something weird about the name “Rite of Spring”, so I know Spring is a one of 4 seasons who have a beautiful nature with flowers, green grass & leaves and returns of birds. But in Fantasia episode 4, it doesn’t looks like a spring, it was looks like a newborn earth with volcanic eruptions, flood, black smoke to the sea creatures, killing by predators, dinosaurs’ heat of death by extremely harsh sunlight, earthquakes & eclipse and it look so scary.
Does anybody else out there feel bad for the stegasaurus? He’s just too big and bulky, everyone else can outrun him. I can just hear him, “guys wait! Wait for me!” and i just get sad. I root for him to get that asshole t-rex every time. I take solace in the fact that if it wasnt needed for the syncing up of the music, if those spikes connected with the head like that, they’d probably pierce through that f***kers head and stab his brain.